February 10, 2011

'Barack Obama nothing short of a national catastrophe'

Canadian David Solway cuts right to the chase in his piece at PJM today titled "Obama Must Go," saying what many Americans have been thinking but as yet have failed to express in such a direct manner. Known for his polemical outspokenness, Solway flat out says that Barack Obama is the worst possible president at the worst possible time, and pins the blame squarely on Obama not only as a cause of the American malaise but also as an effect of a process of ongoing decay and a reflection of the majority who elected him (calling Obama an offspring of the god of civil unrest which has been gathering momentum at least since the radical 1960s).

Here are some excerpts to pique your interest:

[...] His malapropisms, however, are not only a sign of a deeply ignorant man but also a symptom of the policy miscarriages he has implemented since taking office -- again, too numerous to mention in toto. The most recent, of course, is his thorough mishandling of the Egyptian imbroglio, especially his opening the door to the ascendancy of the notorious Muslim Brotherhood into the corridors of power. But given his bungling in both Iraq and Afghanistan, his unwillingness to take steps to prevent Iranian weapons and insurgents from crossing into the battle zone, and his placing American civil security into the palsied hands of Janet Napolitano, his corpse-man gaffe has distinct and ironic implications for American servicemen as well as civilians.

For those who follow American politics closely, but from a privileged distance -- as does this Canadian -- it is hard to resist the conclusion that Barack Obama is nothing short of a national catastrophe, surely the worst presidential blight to fall on the U.S. since the woeful Jimmy Carter and probably as far back as Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce or John Tyler -- take your pick. Many if not most American presidents, it must be admitted, with only a minim of illustrious exceptions, were flat-out second-raters. True, this is par for the course for the majority of political leaders around the world, but Obama is a special case. His evident failings of character and insight might be bearable in a comparatively less hazardous epoch, but in a time of looming insolvency and market collapse, the demographic incursion of extremist elements into the social fabric, aka "stealth jihad," the advancing might of rejuvenated autocracies, an exploding Middle East and the nuclearization of rogue nations, Obama is quite simply the worst possible president at the worst possible time...

It is necessary, however, to see Obama not only as a cause of the American malaise but also as an effect of a process of ongoing decay and a reflection of the majority who elected him. He is the offspring of the god of civil unrest which has been gathering momentum at least since the radical 1960s. As David Horowitz laments, "we now live in a country so divided there are two Americas and two cultures which speak a different language." The tensions tearing America apart today are so massive as to seem almost unbridgeable. If, to take a fanciful example, America should one day fracture into two nations, call them the United States of America and the Republic of the United States, one could conceive an enmity between them no less intense, say, than that between Venezuela and Colombia. (The Panarin hypothesis posits not two but six discrete fragments.) Barring a domestic "reset" and a genuine conservative resurgence, the "culture wars" may well become terminally divisive.

The viciousness of rhetorical combat, the rage of slander and vituperation erupting in the national discourse -- largely, though not exclusively, emanating from the emotional inferno of the left -- transcend the connotation of that increasingly common epithet, "incivility." It is far more than that. The clash of two sundered cultures, variously denominated as red and blue, conservative and socialist, right and left, Republican and Democrat, is a dire portent of things to come. Democrats and Republicans may for a time be able to work together in the House as Obama attempts to rejigger himself for 2012, but they are perpetually at loggerheads in the media, the blogosphere, and the body politic itself. It is a virtual war of words, hearts, and minds, occasionally breaking out in sporadic acts of violence, which is now reaching a crescendo.

[...] For Obama is driving his country into the ground, espousing a social and economic agenda that can only lead to bankruptcy and increasing discord. At the same time, his foreign policy has reduced the United States to an international laughing stock, empowered its enemies, and abandoned its friends and allies. "t is going to be a long two years," writes Victor Davis Hanson, now that "the world has figured Obama out, and the wages of our version of 1979-80 are coming due." Hanson is alluding, of course, to the Iran/Egypt analogy and Obama's repetition of Carter's monumental error in empowering an Islamic fundamentalist regime masking as a democratic alternative. It is as if the faculty of memory has been removed and time has stopped, as if, let's say, a chronosectomy has been performed. But Hanson's warning has far more sweeping significance for a nation that is rapidly "losing it." For one thing, America's territorial waters, so to speak, are shrinking. America is not the colossus it used to be. For another, as we have seen, its cohesion is crumbling. The United States is no longer united.

[...] As Ronald Reagan urged in his 1983 "Evil Empire" speech, we must beware "the temptation to...blithely declare yourself above it all and label both sides equally at fault." What applied then in the international arena applies now on the domestic front. The cultures wars must go on until one side wins or all is lost, which is to say, until either America or the left triumphs. There is no doubt on which ideological parapet Barack Obama stands. Like Hollywood sequels, Obama II would be an even greater clunker than its original version; only, this is no movie but a real-life megaflop in the making.

Clearly, Amercans have a choice to make in 2012, in what is likely to be the most important political decision in their lifetime ... effecting the fate of our nation over the next century. As Mark Noonan aptly notes over at BFV, if Americans re-elect Barack Obama, it could prove catastrophic -- if we defeat him, then we will have made a choice to restore American greatness. (Solway is a bit more succinctly harsher, saying that there is no option if one of the most destructive and recidivist presidents in American history is to be chased from office before his corpse-man gaffe becomes ever more of a reality, and that such a consummation might be a first step in at least partially recuperating the Democratic left back into the majority consensus of American life via the modality of a crushing defeat and, perhaps, of narrowing the rift that divides the nation from itself).

Indeed, it's not just about Obama, the man. It's far more than that. Obama symbolizes both American decline and an American unwillingness to confront the reality of the true threats we face.